A Sound Break for Your Mind

Aristotle first explored the willing suspension of disbelief with the creation of theater, that the audience knows what it watches is not real but puts that knowledge to the side and engages fully with the false reality in front of it. Our work as AV designers often means finding ways to suspend disbelief between the user and the technology, to mitigate our interaction with it: to make it less distracting, to make it feel more human or at least more humane.  

Yet, the last four years have seen a shift in our relationship with technology. Those who could began working from home, the screens that previously threw up barriers to our in-person interactions became the only way we could interact. Beyond the impact of the Covid pandemic, a generation of digital natives have grown into adulthood and Artificial Intelligence has become a boogeyman to, rather than a tool for, creativity. The struggle is less about maintaining an approachable façade of false reality and more about confirming what is real and what is a deepfake.  

It’s enough to make you want to throw away your phone and run into the woods, never to return. And yet, aside from the general need to get on in life, young artists are constantly showing us that, as Robert Frost wrote, the only way out is through.  

For singers whose formative years occurred during the height of Autotune’s reign, it makes sense to play around in the uncanny valley of robotic speech while letting their lyrics be the creative muscle no AI program could replicate. Depending on how connected you are to the 20somethings around you, you might be aware of the niche genre Hyperpop (or you might inform us it’s already passe. Please be kind.) that best exemplifies this embrace of synthetic sounds; rather than smoothing over the sense of artificiality, the songs put them at the forefront pointedly.  

Whether or not the doomsday predictions of AI come true, and whether we give in to a hermetic life, artists of all types will find ways to create art and comment on the world around them. The best thing we can do is give them the resources and space to create. If you listen to some hyperpop today and find you absolutely hate it, don’t worry, your parents probably thought the same thing about [insert your favorite band].